How To Market Your Business While Wearing Multiple Hats
The good thing about owning a small business is having a chance to wear a bunch of different hats.
Of course, that’s also the bad thing about owning a small business. Pressed for time and stretched thin from juggling multiple roles, it’s easy to feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day.
By the time you unlock the front door, turn on the lights, tidy up your store, and make a few changes to your website, it’s time to turn off the lights, lock the front door, and start all over again.
Balancing time and tasks
A lot of small business owners either love the idea of wearing multiple hats, don’t want to absorb the costs associated with hiring additional employees, or don’t want to give up control to someone else. As a result, many feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day. Sound familiar?
But what if you were able to go all “Back to the Future” and suspend Einstein's General Theory of Relativity to add one more productive hour to your day—how much would it be actually worth to you? $20? $75? More? How about $500?
According to a recent survey conducted by eVoice, a virtual phone system provider for entrepreneurs and small businesses, 20% of respondents indicated they would be willing to pay more than $500 for one extra hour in their work day while 90% indicated they would pay $100 to get an hour back. Even more surprisingly, “not having enough time” outweighed making a profit, staying ahead of the competition, and managing employees.
Making marketing a priority
Whether you own a bike repair shop, neighborhood restaurant, boutique clothing store or some other small business, you’ve got to find a way to spend as much of your time as possible actually making and selling things and less time on the backend non-core business functions.
“As a small business owner searching for that extra hour in your day, start by identifying and focusing on the real difference-makers for your business. In most cases, this means marketing, selling, and servicing the customer” says Mike Pugh, VP of marketing at j2 Global, parent company of eVoice. “For everything else, leverage new tools and services to help carry the load. It’s easier than ever to use mobile apps and cloud solutions to take back-office and IT tasks off your to-do list” Pugh added.
If you’re going to effectively market your small business to potential customers, you’ve got to focus on the highest and best use of your time. That means you’ve got to make every email marketing campaign, brochure, and page on your website count. When you’re wearing multiple hats, you don’t have time to waste on tactics that aren’t helping you grow your business.
What about you?
How would you use an extra hour in your day to market your business? And how much would that elusive “25th” hour be worth to you?
By: Shawn Graham
[Image: Flickr user MCroft]
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